How To Be A Popular Web Developer

Just follow these simple steps and it will be you telling people you can’t take projects until sometime late next year.

Learn from the masters
It seems to me that there is a pattern among the web developing elite: develop with standards, maintain a website with a blog, promote a side project, write a book, and earn accolades for your work.

Developer Website Project Book
Dave Shea mezzoblue CSS Zen Garden The Zen of CSS Design
Shaun Inman Shaun Inman Mint and Designologue N/A
Jeffery Zeldman Zeldman ma.gnolia Designing with Standards
Molly Holzschlag Molly WaSP and W3C 30+ books, including The Zen of CSS Design
Eric Meyer meyerweb N/A Eric Meyer on CSS
Cameron Moll Cameron Moll N/A CSS Mastery
Dan Cederholm SimpleBits Cork’d Bullet Proof Web Design
Todd Domney Dominey Design, What do I know? SlideShowPro Professional CSS
Mike Rundle Business Logs 9rules N/A
The above is not an exhaustive list of the web developing elite, but it does help paint the picture of the success pattern. Be excellent at what you do, let the world know, help them for free, and sell an in-depth guide.

In addition to the master’s plan, here are a few more tips for building your name in the industry.

Submit your work to the CSS galleries
Promoting yourself includes gaining recognition for your work. Here’s a list of sites where you can submit your work:

Submit an entry to CSS Zen Garden
Submit an entry to Designologue
Subscribe to the RSS feeds of industry blogs and leave comments and trackbacks
Get a MySpace account and make friends
Submit your site to directories
Submit your blog and feed to directories
Build your web presence using the tips that will be coming from my web presence building series.